The personal blog of Peter Lee a.k.a. "China Hand"... Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel, and an open book to those who read. You are welcome to contact China Matters at the address chinamatters --a-- prlee.org or follow me on twitter @chinahand.

Sunday, October 05, 2014

Hongkongistan! Democracy and Chauvinism in Hong Kong and Xinjiang

It’s an open question how much energy the demonstrations in
Hong Kong draw from a desire for democracy.After all, Hong Kong has never experienced democracy over the last two
hundred odd years, which hasn’t seemed to hurt it too much as it galumphed its
way into prosperity as a British and then Red Chinese colonial enclave.

But what is undeniable is the energy that the demonstrations
derive from a sense of alienation from the People’s Republic of China, fueled
by political and economic discontents, perhaps, but also by a growing sense for
many younger people of local lineage that they are “Hong Kongers” not “Chinese”,
and they can’t be bossed around by Beijing.

Even before the current ruckus, about half of residents
identified themselves as exclusively “Hong Kongers”; expect that number to rise
ineluctably as the population that grew up as “Chinese” under British
colonialism fades away.

Increased economic integration with the mainland has not
eroded Hong Kongers’ local identity in favor of “we’re all Chinese”
kumbaya.Just the opposite.

The ugly and problematic face of Hong Kong democracy agitation
is local chauvinism, expressed as detestation of the hundreds of thousands of
mainland “locusts” who descend on the city to offend locals with their uncouth
behavior, birth their children in Hong Kong hospitals to gain resident
privileges, drive up real estate prices, compete for jobs—and pump billions
into the local economy.

The emergence of a distinct local identity for ethnic
Chinese is characteristic of communities in places like Singapore and Taiwan
which, like Hong Kong, are somewhat beyond the reach of the PRC and its
homogenizing doctrine of ethnic solidarity.

In Taiwan, about half the population self-identifies as
Taiwanese and the other half self-identifies as Chinese-Taiwanese.Those who identify as exclusively Chinese and
presumably represent the core constituency for reunification has dropped from
50% in the 1990s to the low single digits today.

The most worrying consequence of the ruckus in Hong Kong for
its Communist masters, I think, may not be “democratic contagion”.To be sure, in the relatively unlikely event
that the CCP capitulates to the Hong Kong demonstrators’ main demand—that the nomination
as well as election process for city offices be conducted through universal
suffrage voting—pro-democracy activists on the mainland would be emboldened and
create awkward moments for the PRC.

However, I believe a more pressing problem might be “chauvinism
contagion”, the encouragement that the ongoing demonstrations in Hong Kong give
to resisting ethnic groups.

There are interesting parallels between the deep reservoirs
of anti-PRC resentment and local chauvinism among the people of Hong Kong and
Xinjiang.In both cases, there is perhaps less
resistance to the nature of PRC rule i.e. the absence of democracy, than there is to the legitimacy of PRC rule itself.

The historically autonomous Uyghur communities of Xinjiang were only rolled into
China in the 1950s and a closer relationship to the PRC has actually
accelerated the formation of Uyghur identity, nationalism and, after the
dissolution of the Soviet Union, a feeling among many that the Uyghurs have
been jobbed out of their own stan by the PRC.

In a similar fashion, I would say, the less direct but still
unmistakable imposition of PRC rule—which only rolled in in 1997--has fostered
strong feelings of Hong Kong identity which provide energy to the democracy
movement, and also fuel the less edifying phenomenon of anti-mainlander
chauvinism.

It may be that, in fact, democracy is secondary to the
desire of young Hong Kongers for their own “Hongkongistan”.

In his book “The Uyghurs: Strangers in Their Own Land” (Columbia University Press New York 2010), Gardner Bovingdon discussed the
interesting phenomenon of nascent Uyghur-Hong Kong solidarity which, in 1997,
ran only from west to east:

“In the spring of
1997, many Uyghurs brought up the wish for independence as Hong Kong’s
retrocession approached.It seems quaint…but
there was a widespread belief…that Britain would not relinquish its colony
without a fight.Xinjiang was rife with
rumors that Uyghur organizations were preparing to take advantage of the ensuing
chaos to stage a military uprising.…a
baker told me cheerfully…that Xinjiang would soon be independent…a group of
taxi drivers predicted to me at curbside that July would bring independence;
and a gathering of police spent several hours alternately lamenting Xinjiang’s
colonization by China instead of the Soviet Union and speaking hopefully about
the possibility that the rumors of a planned uprising were true…Hong Kong’s
peaceful retrocession seemed to take many people by surprise.The morning after Hong Kong’s return…I sat
with a group of students utterly sick at heart that nothing had happened the
night before…”

Now, seventeen years later, Hong Kong has caught up with
Xinjiang!

And, I would imagine that
today, as news about Hong Kong trickles into Xinjiang, the excitement among
Uyghurs—and the anxiety of the CCP—is palpable.

I would also imagine that the CCP recognizes that “one-person-one-vote-itis”
might not represent as big a threat to its rule as the perception that the
basic legitimacy of its rule is being challenged by profoundly alienated groups
that are “unidentifying” as “Chinese” and choose to express their opposition
through the medium of democratic agitation against an alien occupation.

The idea that the fundamental legitimacy of CCP rule is
under threat—that the CCP in danger of losing its intimidating mojo, participation in the PRC polity is starting to look more like an option and less than an obligation, and forcefully asserting the CCP monopoly of power to potentially
disaffected groups throughout China has become a pressing state priority—might, in my opinion, be more likely to
send the PLA trundling into Admiralty than fantods about democracy.

This kind of disaffection,whether in Xinjiang or Hong Kong, can’t be handled only with APCs
and mass detentions.

In
Xinjiang, the PRC is trying to uproot Uyghur particularism with assimilation: a campaign that
combines education and indoctrination of children, economic development,
co-option and splitting of Uyghur community leaders, and, of course, APCs and
mass detentions.

One of the key tools is Mandarin education, so that Uyghur
children will be drawn into the Han matrix and lose more of their nettlesome
Uyghur identity.

However, assimilation and papering over linguistic and communal differences is not just a preoccupation of Chicoms clinging to power; it's a major governing strategy of governments throughout the Chinese diaspora.

To return to what is perhaps the PRC's most pressing problem of integration and assimilation outside of Hong Kong, in the remote regions of China’s west, interestingly enough,
the PRC is replicating the assimilatory strategy of one of the world’s most advanced
Chinese-led polities—the city of Singapore.

Singapore has presided over a long term campaign of national
redefinition, which has not only used specifying English as the primary
language in order to supersede the ethnic identities of Singapore’s Chinese, Indian, and Malay residents;
it has also mandated Mandarin as the second language as part of a campaign to
manage conflicts between Singapore’s various Chinese ethnicities—particularly between
Hokkienese and Techeowese—through a program of indoctrination and Mandarin instruction
that has weakened ethnic particularism and, with it, some of the Chinese
cultural identity within the China diaspora groups.

It is perhaps noteworthy that Singapore—the Chinese city
state powerhouse is presumably the object of the admiration and potential
emulation for independence-minded Hong Kongers--does not seem terribly happy
with Hong Kong’s expression of assertiveness.

Presumably this has to do with the ruling PAP’s strong preference
for managed democracy and abhorrence of political demonstrations organized by
competing parties; it might also have something to do with anxieties over the
potential for overt displays of resentment by Singapore’s alienated 15%
minority of ethnic Malays who, like Xinjiangers, probably feel like “strangers
in their own land”; but it also may have something to do with discomfort with
Hong Kong chauvinism and the challenge it offers to its assimilatory vision.

Anger at the Mandarin menace is, of course, a staple of Hong
Kong identity politics, especially as continued economic integration with the
mainland has led to Mandarin supplanting English as Hong Kong’s second language.One of the gripes about Chief Executive C.Y.
Leung was that he was the first CE to deliver his inaugural address in
Mandarin.

Here’s a post describing the anger of Hong Kong university
students that mainlanders’ calls for Mandarin instruction were being
accommodated by a professor; it also includes an illustration of a poster
deploring the “mainlandization” of Hong Kong university education and the
damage it did to the graduate study (it claims 70% of Hong Kong graduate
students are mainlanders) and employment prospects of native Hong Kong university students.

There is, of course, a limited window for asserting the political prerogatives of Hong Kongers.

Barring a successful local rebellion, in the ultra-long game Hong
Kong merges into Shenzhen or Guangdong in 2047 and the Hong Kong identity is
submerged beneath the Cantonese demographic tsunami.

Of course, it also must be noted that the ethnic particularism problem doesn't end there.

Cantonese particularism,
along with Hakka particularism, based on the distinctiveness of southern
ethnic, linguistic, and cultural identity from the north, has been a headache
for CCP control and is a historical and potentially renascent fault line of its
own (continuing the dialect theme, central government
attempts to sideline Cantonese in favor of Mandarin in Guangdong province have
aroused bitter opposition), but that’s grist for a future crisis. And there's the notorious Shanghai chauvinism. And the bloody devotion of Sichuanese to their prerogatives.

All in all, the Chinese ethnicmonolith is a mirage—a fact of life not only
for the PRC in dealing with distinctive ethnic groups in the West and South,
but also within the Han polity inside China, in Hong Kong, and, for places like
Singapore and Taiwan, in the diaspora.

As that myth fades, new prospects open: not only for the crumbling of PRC rule, but also for the ethnic unity of the mainland and how powerful forces will seek to preserve or undermine it. And for the political fortunes of Taiwan and its split between indigenes and mainlanders, and for the nations of central Asia who divide the scattered Uyghur population with Xinjiang, and a share in its problems.

The Occupy Hong Kong strategy is based on a tickle-the-dragon's-tail program of carefully orchestrated escalation. It's assumed that giving some rein to local particularism will pressure the CCP in making some concessions on local democracy, not spark a runaway independence movement or create an existential threat for the CCP that provokes a military crackdown.

But now what once perhaps seemed impossible seems, if not likely, well, possible.

Advocates of democracy—and the PRC getting a well-deserved
kick in the ass—unreservedly welcome the Hong Kong Occupy movement.But many of those who govern Chinese
polities, I expect, note the presence of the doppelganger of local chauvinism,
and find their enthusiasm tempered by fears of what rancorous identity politics, language rights,
and communal division will do to their visions of stability and prosperity.

10 comments:

Peter, May be HKers chauvinism have to do with this, but it's a fact that HK chauvinism towards mainlanders have been there all along, even before 1997!I could argue that, heck, NYers has a chauvinism towards southern-staters, but that does lead to "splittism"!.Personally I don't really see on what basis they have reasons to be chauvinistic: In the US, I can think of many successful Chinese immigrants, but most of them are from Taiwan, and then the Mainland. This is only natural as the Taiwanese immigrants came first. But I am hard pressed to think of a HKer (despite having migrated here very very early on...)!

Peter, I feel that in the case of teaching minorities Mandarin, it seems to be a more complexed question, because it has been well noted that one of the reason why economic development in those communities have fallen behind other poor Chinese places lies in that because their population's lack of Mandarin fluency prevented them from getting work in the coastal factories.

AFAIK, their mother tongue is still taught in primary school in those places, which seems to be already a considerable plus to hell even other Chinese dialects (which are often prevented from being spoken in public schools).

Very true, but there are also integrating factors. Think, for example, of the huge number (millions?) of Taiwanese moving to the Mainland to work and marry locals. (The "Taiwanese starlet marrying a Shanghai millionaire" is already standard tabloid fare.) And then the thousands of Mainland women moving to Taiwan. Same for HK and Singapore, no? And then the rising status of Mainland China vis-à-vis the US, Japan, and Europe. If Beijing can kickstart a viable pop-culture industry along Korean lines, the stan problems should disappear.

Yes. Identity problem is more basic than political. I would think identity and economic inequality are the most fundamental reasons for the frustration. Of course, there are so many China haters in HK, too. I don't know how much, but CIA definitely has a hand in spreading dirty linens of China in HK for the past 70 years. P.S

Xinjiang used to be called Western district, and Chinese jurisdiction has been present, with some brief interruption since Han Dynasty. It is "new"territory as a "new"unit for ton as in Newton. The author may benefit from reading some history.

I came up with a solution to the language issue titled: "Mandarin, your sentence structure is wrong" it is on my scribd. Mandarin originally had a Glottal stop so it sounded "more like English"? This means Mandarin has DEVOLVED and we have to question how more this devolution will progress. Nobody can get along with just mandarin, you have to learn several other dialects. We can learn mandarin in the context of literature, medicine, ect.